Part One

We cheated when we painted the stars

and placed fireflies in the black ink

around our canvas-planet.

 

A half-sky hovered in limbo as we

copied and pasted the constellations.

 

Nothing we’ve made is complete;

no love, no star, no road through the hills.

 

We smile in mirrors with half our teeth

and laugh half-heartedly at the stars

we’ve forgotten are our own failures.

 

A moth beats against the screen door:

“imagine us beneath a whole sky.”

We put our paints away, kiss goodnight,

and hold hands in our sleep.

The Night the Power Went Out

She spun the gold band and diamond around her ring finger,

watching it as if the words she sought were in the jewel.

I tapped my foot and extinguished a candle as the last

of the wax dripped onto the envelope she’d just given me –

the envelope from her fiancé, letting me know.

Finally letting me know that she’d never be mine.

“You know”, she said, looking up, “I’d have left him for you

and it could have been your ring, not his, on my finger.”

I placed a new candle in the melted wax of the old

and let it grow cold, and harden. I didn’t respond.

“If only you’d have asked me to, I’d have been yours.”

Lighting the new candle, I heard a gasp behind me,

where she was. Turning, I saw the tears, each like diamonds

identical to the one he gave her. “Why didn’t you ask?”

I swallowed the diamonds in my throat, put the candle down

between us and lit it, lighting the face I’d loved for years.

I could never trust a girl who’d leave one man for another,

and I told her so, and I saw her to the door and said,

“I could never trust you.” She left, and I lit candles.